Kakamega governor Wycliffe Oparanya has accused the Senate of doing little to safeguard the interest of the counties.
The governor, appearing for the first time before the County Public Accounts and Investment Committee, said the Senate is usurping the roles of the county assemblies.
Since he was elected governor in 2013, he has not appeared before the watchdog committee. He has on two occasions sent Deputy Governor Philip Kutima to respond to the audit queries raised by Auditor General Edward Ouko.
In 2015, the governor sought court orders to block his arrest after the Senate watchdog committee obtained a warrant of arrest after he ignored three summonses to appear before it.
Yesterday the governor, accompanied by Kutima, said the committee chaired by Homa Bay senator Moses Kajwang’ is “eating into the roles of the county assembly”.
The governor pointed to senators some of the weak links the MPs have failed to fix and which he claimed are affecting rollout of devolution across the 47 counties.
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Oparanya cited the IFMIS problem, which has persisted across the counties over six years, causing inconveniences to the devolved units.
The Senate, Oparanya said, should find a cure to the recurrent problem of delay in disbursement of funds by the Treasury and the duplication of roles by various government agencies like Kura and Kerra.
“In Kakamega, we received the allocation for May and June on July 2. We have problems with the IFMIS system. We cannot operate because of IFMIS, this is a way of killing devolution,” he said.
Oparanya also faulted the Senate for not coming up with a clear legislation of sharing revenue. “The entire budgets of the 47 counties are just 10 per cent of the national budget,” he said. The governor was responding to the 25 audit queries flagged by Ouko in his 2015 report.
